Update@ 04/04/2020:
So, 11 years later and paid subscription models that remove the ads, the advent of high speed mobile connectivity, and a generation of people who have grown up streaming free music on YouTube and Spotify have changed the music landscape forever. It took me a while to adopt it, but I am now a paid-up family plan subscriber.
There is quite a lot being written about streaming services lately, but I really don’t see what the palaver is about! I’m sure their is a place in the music market for streamed, ‘free’ music that uses advertising to pay it’s way – but my view is that this section of the market will be made up of people who certainly do not describe themselves as music lovers, but more occasional listeners.
The problem as I see it is that this is a section of the market that will not be motivated enough to become staunch advocates of the market and certainly won’t be seen as trend setters amongst their peers with the influence to promote the service across society to make things happen.
Yes, music lovers and techies will try out this software, since there are few barriers to adoption but what these people want is a system where they can store the music locally or as part of their cloud and take it with them for playback on the many devices they own – which includes iPhones and the media servers in their lounge. This is not possible with services such as Spotify, so I don’t see a long term lifespan for this.
Apple will never allow such a service to be used on the iPhone and iPod Touch as it will directly compete with their revenue streams from ITunes music.
The only thing that Spotify does do is allow the recording of high quality music on your computer (which you can add to your iTunes library!) – much like what we all used to do with the radio, a cassette deck and the Top 40 on a Sunday…
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